Forgettable weekend for Armaan

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Armaan Ebrahim endured a tough weekend, as mechanical issues forced the young Indian driver to retire from round four of the FIA GT World Series at the Slovakia Ring circuit, in Slovakia.

The team were positive coming into the weekend on the back of a maiden podium at Zandvoort last month, but disappointment was in store as mechanical issues spoilt their weekend.
The team found during the first free practice session that exhaust was broken near the engine mounting, which meant that engine had to be removed in order to replace the exhaust system. It forced the team to sit out of the second and final practice session before qualifying.
“We were hoping to pick up from where we left off, but unfortunately it wasn’t to be,” said Armaan.
“On Saturday morning, the first practice session was quite promising as we were around 1.2 seconds off the pace and were still working on dialling the car in.
“We were hoping to make a step forward in FP2, but then the guys discovered that the exhaust was broken right near the engine mounting,” he explained.
Armaan went into qualifying with just seven laps of track time from the first practice session and to make matters worse, he encountered yellow flags on his fastest qualifying lap, which cost him three-tenths of a second — a significant loss considering the extremely close grid.
Armaan started Race One 17th on the grid and managed to make up a few places on the opening laps, and was running 14th when he realised something was amiss. He managed to pull off the circuit safely. The car had suffered a terminal engine failure which would require replacing the engine.
The team tried to replace the entire powertrain during the three-hour gap between the qualifying and the main race, but could not fire the car up in time.
“It was my first time on this circuit so track time was critical, plus we still had work to do on the front-end so missing the second practice cost us a lot,” Armaan said.
“It was a bad weekend, that’s how it is sometimes.
“Everyone worked extremely hard, today and last night so it is really disappointing for it to end this way,” he concluded.